David Cay Johnston: Billions of Tax Dollars Later, No New Jobs for New York [AUDIO]

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The National Memo’sDavid Cay Johnston appeared on WNYC Tuesday morning, to discuss a disturbing new report that New York State is giving corporations billions of dollars in tax breaks to spur job creation that never materializes.

“This the latest in a number of studies but it’s the most comprehensive — and it shows that over the last nine years in New York, the state has given about $1,400 in tax breaks for every household in the state—$10 billion in round numbers,” Johnston said. “And instead of creating jobs, we have 175,000 fewer jobs. That is, we spent $57,000 per job eliminated.”

The news could be incredibly damaging to Governor Andrew Cuomo’s political standing — which may be why, Johnston says, the governor tried to suppress the information:

New York is hardly the only state to waste tax dollars in the name of job creation. As Johnston reported in The National Memo in October, states such as Arizona, Iowa, and Ohio have spent tens of millions on public-private partnerships that accomplish little — aside from redistributing taxpayer money to politically connected businesses.

To learn more about New York’s failed tax incentive policy, read David Cay Johnston’s latest column in State Tax Notes.